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End of the Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages lasted from about 1014 AD until 1453 AD. In the broader geographic sweep of history, the Middle Ages spans the era between the demise of various Classical civilisations around 476, and the start of the age of truly world history about 1453. The first half is covered here. Outside Europe, extraordinary things had been achieved by the end of the Middle Ages. The native Han Chinese eventually threw-off the Mongol yoke, and under the Ming Dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing the richest and most prosperous economy in the world, amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that Zheng He led seven great maritime expeditions throughout the Indian Ocean, reaching as far as Africa. In Japan, the emperor was reduced to little more than a figureheads, with the emergence Japanese feudalism, characterised by the dominance of a ruling class of warriors, the Samurai and Shogun. India was repeatedly overrun by Muslim from Central Asia, eventually leading to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206. The sultanate dominated much of northern India and made many forays into the south, that merely paved the way for the rise of the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire. The impact of Islam on India has been inestimable, becoming a part of the country's rich religious and cultural heritage. Meanwhile, unique civilisations continued to evolve in the Americas, despite complete isolation from the rest of the world. By about 1453 mankind was probably more diversified than ever before or since. Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and European civilisations all lived independently long enough to leave an ineradicable weight of tradition in the ground-plan of our world. The insulation of one civilization from another was never absolute; there was always some interaction of ideas going on. But the age of independent or nearly independent civilisations was coming to a close. The story of the growing integration of world history after 1453, is dominated by the astonishing success of one civilisation among many, that of Europe. It was with the modernisation of Europe that the Modern World History began. History China in the Late Middle Ages to realised the ultimate rags-to-riches story, rising from peasant origin to standing atop China alone and unchallenged. Born into a desperately poor peasant family, he was orphaned in his youth and eventually taken in by a Buddhist monastery, where he received a rudimentary education. But at the tail end of the Yuan Dynaasty, Zhu joined a rebel group, rose rapidly up the ranks to rebel general, then took over their leadership, then defeated his rivals, and finally became emperor of China. ]] The Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) in China lasted a century, but began to crumble almost as soon as its founder, Kublai Khan, died in 1294. The Mongol ruling elite adopted substantially to Chinese culture, making good use of capable native Han Chinese advisors, and administering the country through the traditional Confusion bureaucracy. Beijing was rebuilt as the winter capital, while a magnificent new summer capital was built 200 miles to the north at Shangdu; the "Xanadu" of Samuel Taylor Coleridge fame. Under Mongol rule, foreigners from many advanced civilizations within the vast empire settled in China, who enriched Chinese culture with new elements. On the other hand, the Mongols set up social conventions preventing assimilation with the subjects they now ruled. The population was divided into four classes; the Mongols, a tiny but privileged minority who reserved for themselves almost all the top administrative and military posts; one rung below that heritage from Central Asian steppes was held in high regard; next came the northern Chinese who the Mongols were most familiar with; and the last group was the southern Chinese who had resisted longest. The populace of the south had prospered greatly under the former Song Dynasty, and now provided 80% of all tax revenue, yet they were effectively barred from holding higher office. This financial burder was often squandered by the Yuan in a series of botched military adventures in Japan and Southeast Asia. Kublai Khan left a whole load of sons and grandsons, who squabbled amongst themselves for power, hastening the dynasty's demise; for centuries China had known factionalism at court, mostly fought through political means, but Mongol factionalism invariably resorted to military power. From the 1320, there followed one natural disaster after another, from disastrous droughts and floods, to plagues (including the Black Death), followed by the resulting widespread famines; the classic harbinger of the loss of the Mandate of Heaven. From the 1350s, China resembled all those other times in Chinese history where one dynasty was on its way out, and another was starting to form; a potent cocktail of popular uprisings, secret societies, widespread banditry, and regional warlords openly flouted Yuan authority. In the south, three competing rebel groups began fighting for supremacy, all intent on liberating all of China from Mongol rule. One, centred in the Huai River basin, was under the nominal leadership of a one-time Buddhist monk named Zhu Yuanzhang (d. 1398). Zhus first major coup was capturing the city of Nanjing in 1356, a strategically important city on the Yangtze River. There he began assembling a strong centralised government and greatly strengthened his military power. By 1363, Zhu had cemented his control of southern China, winning out over his rivals at the Battle of Lake Poyang (1363), one of the largest navel battles in history. Five year later in 1368, Zhu was ready to make his move on the Yuan capital of Beijing, which was occupied by Ming forces in September; pockets of Yuan loyalitst continued to resist until 1381. Thus China was unified again under a native Chinese dynasty. Zhu gave his dynasty an appropriately glorious names; the Ming Dynasty meaning "brilliant", with himself as the Hongwu Emperor (1368-98) or "vast milltary power". The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) proved to be one of the stablest and longest ruling periods of Chinese history; it was also the last of the native Han Chinese dynasties. The long reign of the Hongwu Emperor established the governmental structure, policies, and tone that would characterise almost the whole dynasty. One of his great successes was in agricultural reform. During the Yuan era, the local landed elites, unable to advance in the bureaucracy, had instead focused on expanding their estates at the expense of the peasantry, From a peasant background himself, Hongwu had the estates broken-up, and redistributed to young farmers, with laws established to prevent landlords from seizing those lands; independent peasant landholders again predominated in Chinese agriculture. When combined with public works projects such as irrigation systems, the result was huge improvements in production and this in turn led to an enormous growth in population. Nanjing was the Ming capital through 1403, after which it was transferred to Beijing to be better placed to deal with any Mongol threat. Construction of a new city there lasted until 1420, at the centre of which was a hugely ambitious imperial residence and administrative complex known now as the Forbidden City. Needless to say, the forbidden aspect derives from the controlled access to it; no one was permitted within its walls without the emperor's permission. It served as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government for almost 500 years. The Great Wall of China was also repaired to effectively protect the northern frontier. Practically all that remains of the Wall today are the parts that were rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty. While it did not totally stop Mongol incursions - they briefly besiege Beijing in 1449 - it had the desired effect of slowing them down and warning of advancing enemies. The first Ming emperor was a distrustful and suspicious ruler. The emperors with the Confusion bureaucracy ordered in a rigid, immobile hierarchy with his own family and supporters at the top. The new emperor was distrustful and a strict disciplinarian. The influence of palace eunuchs meanwhile grew as a counterweight against the Confucian bureaucrats. Yet he also attempted to impose rigidity to hereditary occupations on the populace. It was the well-behaved but rigid system that later prevented the Ming government from being able to adapt to a rapidly changing society, and eventually led to its decline. Commerce and international trade, which had flourished under the Song and Yuan, were less emphasised by the Ming dynasty. Chinese culture had been enriched by foreign elements during the Mongol era. The population rapidly recovered, contributing to the growth of urbanisation and proliferation of market towns around the country. China underwent a dramatic shift towards a genuine market economy; the largest in the world. Growing cash-crops and small-scale private industry flourished often specialising in paper, silk, cotton, and notably porcelain goods. The Ming period was renowned for ceramics and porcelains. Kilns investigated new techniques in design and shapes, showing a predilection for colour and painted design. The best known of these are of blue-on-white decor, with a rich floral and pictorial emphasis. By the reign of the Wanli Emperor (1572–1620), kilns were producing wares specifically catering to European tastes, who found them captivating; and still do. The Ming period also saw a publishing boom in China, using manual movable type printing. The most striking development was vernacular novels produced for those with rudimentary education, such as merchants and women in educated families. The most famous are Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, ''and ''Journey to the West. Informal travel writing was another highlight. Foreign trade had also increased considerably during the Mongol era, notably with Japan, and China was now exporting goods around the world on an unprecedented scale. She was not only an important part of the more famous Silk Road, but also the Indian Ocean Trade network. Dating back to the 8th-century, a huge number of port cities around the Indian Ocean basin were interconnected in a vast maritime trade network, that stretched from Zanzibar, Mombasa, and Mogadishu in East Africa, through Hormuz in the Persia Gulf, Calicut in India, Canton in China, and east to the islands of Indonesia and Java. Predictable winds in the Indian Ocean made trade incredibly easy, with a well-understood calendar for the seasons to sail east and west. Indian Ocean Trade peaked for the Chinese during the reign of the Yongle Emperor (1402-1424), who worked strenuously to extend China's influence beyond its borders. In 1405 he launched the first of seven great maritime expeditions led by the eunuch admiral Zheng He (d. 1433); a Chinese Age of Discovery decades before the European equivalent. Between 1405 and 1433, a fleet of unprecedented grandeur and scale journeyed throughout the Indian Ocean as far as the Persian Gulf, East Africa, and Indonesia. Their aim was to impress those places with the power of the Ming in order to bring tribute missions, rather than to accumulate information and experience or to dominate maritime trade. China ultimately had nothing to motivate continuing such expensive voyages, unlike the Europeans with their hunger for the valuable trade in spices and other luxuries. International trade was already prospering, with the Chinese typically exporting porcelain, silks, medicine, and items of gold and silver, while importing spices, ivory, rare woods, and ingredients for dyes. The emperors who followed Yongle dropped anchor on China’s brief experiment in maritime exploration, and the imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair. There were even periods of extreme isolationism when ocean going vessels were banned. The Portuguese would first reach China in 1516, during the European Age of Discovery. After some initial hostilities, they gained consent from the Ming court to settle Macau in 1557 as their permanent trade base in China. For a century after the Yongle emperor, China remained stable, tranquil, and thrived economically. But the Ming Dynasty eventually went to seed for a host of reasons, and was swept away by a foreign dynasty from Manchuria, the Qing Dynasty. Japan in the Late Middle Ages The power of the Japanese emperors had been eclipsed during the Heian Period (794-1185) by the politically dominant Fujiwara clan. This displacement became even more obvious after they passed from power; it would remain until the nineteenth century. The fragility of the Fujiwara regime seems obvious in retrospect. With the emperor and high nobility increasingly immersed in the courtly pleasures and intrigues of the capital Kyoto, out in the real world of the provinces, powerful military forces were developing. The rugged landscape and isolated valleys of Japan where local loyalties were strong, always worked against centralised rule. The minor provincial nobility were increasingly left to their own devices, and found themselves in the position to create local power bases for themselve, with their own private armies of Samurai warriors. The imperial Confucian bureaucracy was firmly reserved for the aristocracy, unlike the Chinese equivalent, and could do nothing to oppose the interests of the noble families. Outstanding among these military clans were the Taira and the Minamoto. With the country troubled by peasant revolts from the 10th-century and the still unsubdued Ainu peoples, gradually local chieftains allied themselves with one or other of these two great military clans. Both the Taira and the Minamoto were descended from distant imperial family members barred from the line of succession; a practice known as "dynastic shedding". Thus they were not only hostile to one another, but to the imperial court itself. In 1156, there was a succession crisis within both the imperial family and Fujiwara clan, and each factions enlisted warriors from the Minamoto and Taira. The Taira initially prevailed, henceforth basing themselves in Kyoto and dominating the political scene in ways reminiscent of the Fujiwara. Over the next 20 years or so, while the Taira fell prey to many of the vices that lurked in the capital, the Minamoto quietly rebuilt their strength in the provinces under Yoritomo (d. 1199), a canny and ruthless leader. Finally in 1180, Yoritomo mounted a rebellion against the Taira rule on a scale theretofore unseen; the Genpei War (1180–1185). By 1184 Kyoto had fallen and the Taira had been pursued to the western tip of Honshū. The victory of the Minamoto in the civil war was sealed at the naval Battle of Dan-no-ura (April 1185). In a well-known tragic tale, the widow of the fallen Taira leader leapt into the sea clasping her 7-year-old son, rather than have him surrender. Yoritomo was now the de-facto ruler of Japan, but did not seek to become emperor himself. Instead he had the emperor confer legitimacy on him through the title of Shogun. In theory he represented merely the military arm of the emperor’s government, but in practice he was in charge of government in the broad sense; the emperors in Kyoto were mere figureheads, while the Shogun ruled Japan. As an institution, it was to last almost 700 years. Yoritomo set up his base in his home territory of Kamakura, rather than Kyoto; the Kamakura Shogunate (1185–1333). The shogunate further consolidated its political power relative to Kyoto, after the failed rebellion to restore political power to the court; the Jōkyū War (1221). The military rule of the Shoguns was made possible by a new warrior class known as the Samurai, that had emerged from the armed retainers of local chieftains. In a pattern reminiscent feudalism in Europe, they established themselves as the local aristocracy of small independent territories, serving more powerful regional warlords. The result was a pyramid of loyalty leading up to the military overlord of Japan, the Shogun himself. The lord-vassal relationship was a more absolute commitment of loyalty than any practised in Europe. It was formalised in the Bushido, ''or “''the way of the warrior”'','' a codes of honour stressing sincerity, patience, serenity, loyalty, and martial arts mastery, with ritual suicide or Harakiri being the ultimate safeguard of a Samurai’s honour. Zen Buddhism, a sect of Buddhism that had reached Japan from China in the 12th century, particularly appealed to the new Samurai ruling class, with its emphasis on austerity and self-discipline. It became almost the state religion during the Kamakura period, and influenced some of the most distinctive cultural aspects of Japanese life, such as the exquisite simplicity of Japanese ceramics and polite formalities of the Tea Ceremony. The greatest crisis of the Kamakura Shogunate came with a threat from overseas. Under Kublai Khan (d. 1294), the Mongol Empire was close to its peak and after conquering Korea in 1259 he sent requests to Japan to submit to him, but these were ignored. In 1274, a Mongol army of some 40,000 men landed on Kyūshū, the southern most of Japan's four main islands. However, gallant Japanese defense forced them to retreat to their ships, where a sudden typhoon destroyed around a third of the fleet and the survivors returned to Korea. A more determined attempt was made seven years later from both Korea and China. Allegedly, Kublai constructed of a massive armada of 4400 warships to carry a force of 140,000 men. Due to good preparations, the Japanese fought the Mongols to a standstill for several weeks, until the onset of the typhoon season. This time over half their ships were keeled-over, the remnants of the invading army withdrew, and there was no further Mongol attempt to invade Japan. These typhoons prompted the idea that the Japanese were a divinely protected people. A name was coined for the storms which twice have saved them, Kamikaze, ''meaning "''divine wind". Later this came to refer to the World War II suicide pilots who gave their lives to protect Japan from invasion. Although nature protected Japan from the Mongol invaders, the cost of the defense fatally undermined the Kamakura Shogunate. The invasions caused disaffection among the regional warlords, who now expected to be rewarded for their part in the victory; traditionally land confiscated from a defeated enemy, but there were no lands to be given. Furthermore, with a custom of divided inheritance, many Samurai found themselves sinking into poverty, and roaming the countryside as bands of Ronin. Thus the vassal structure of the Kamakura regime began to unravel, with lords challenging the authority of the Shogun. An unusually assertive Emperor Go-Daigo (1318-39) took advantage of the chaos in a bid to reassert the primacy of the imperial court as in the 10th-century. One of the Japan's most promising young generals, Ashikaga Takauji (d. 1358), threw his lot in with the emperor. Together they besieged and took the fortress-city of Kamakura in 1333, and the Shogunate quickly disintegrated. Takauji now expected the title of Shogun, but Go-Daigo endeavored to monopolise power for himself. The rift led Takauji to cause of a rival claimant to the imperial throne; to further weaken the emperors the Kamakura Shoguns had alternated between two contending imperial lines, the Northern Court and Southern Court. In 1336, he drove Emperor Go-Daigo from Kyoto, and installed a new emperor who two years did formally declared him Shogun two years later; the Muromachi Shogunate (1338-1573), named after the district of Kyoto where they were based. For the next 56 years political power was divided between the imperial Southern Court based in Yoshino and the Northern Court in Kyōto under the Shogunate. It remained for Takauji’s grandson to broker the surrender of the Southern Court in 1392. But the protracted turmoil meant the Muromachi Shogunate was never as firmly in control of Japan as their predecessors. Regional warlords increasingly asserted their independence from central authority, and vied with one another in seemingly interminable power struggles. The Muromachi period was both warlike and culturally very rich. The famous Golden Pavilion in Kyoto built in 1397 by the Shogun Yoshimitsu as a villa for his own retirement, on his death converted into a Buddhist temple according to his wishes. Some of Japan's most representative art forms developed, including ink wash painting, Ikebana flower arrangement, the distinctive Japanese garden style, Bonsai, and their passion for theatre. The style of Japanese Noh theatre and almost the entire repertoire of plays were developed by the father and son, Kanami (d. 1384) and Zeami Motokiyo (d. 1443), who were taken under the Shogun’s patronage. In Noh the all-male actors sing and dance scenes from legend with an exquisite slowness and solemnity which can nevertheless imply great passion. The Japanese economy also prospered with renewed contact with Ming China, after the Chinese sought support in suppressing Japanese pirates. Japanese wood, sulfur, copper ore, swords, and folding fans were traded for Chinese silk, porcelain, books, and coins. During the last century of the Muromachi Shogunate, starting in 1467, the country entered a period of virtually constant civil war; the Sengoko Period (1467-1603). Amid this on-going anarchy, a Chinese ship carrying three Portuguese traders was blown off course and landed in Japan in 1543; Japan's first contact with the European Age of Discovery. Soon European traders would introduce many new items to Japan, most importantly the musket. Japan was gradually reunified by the powerful warlord Oda Nobunaga (d. 1582) and his successors, who adapted quickly to the new firearms and ushered in the Edo Period. India in the Late Middle Ages The late medieval period is defined by the disruption to native Hindu India by Islam. The explosive first century of Arab Muslim conquest had brought their armies to mouth of the Indus River (modern-day Pakistan) by 712, but they got no further and ceased to trouble the Indian peoples until the early-10th-century. The long-standing threat to India from Muslim invaders were drawn from the complex of Turkish peoples of Central Asia. In the vanguard of Islamic expansion was the Ghaznavid Sultanate (977-1186) in modern day Afghanistan, founded by a Turkish general called Sabuktigin. His brilliant son, Mahmud (d. 1030), turned this tiny provincial city into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire, funded by raids into north-west India for plunder. Gradually the raids took on a mood of religious zeal, as much as for booty. India was the first place where Muslims were confronted with a highly developed cult of idolatry. The profusion of sculpted Hindu gods and goddesses in India was well calculated to outrage any attentive reader of the Qur'an, with its prohibitions against idols and graven images. In early 1026, Mahmud had a holy purpose in marching his army across the desert into Gujarat to plunder and vandalise the great temple to Shiva at Somnath. Powerful legends later developed in the Turko-Persian literature boasting how 50,000 devotees died in its defence. It was the first in a long series of sectarian outrages which have marred the 1000-year relationship between Muslims and Hindus. With Ghazni distracted by the rise of the Seljuq Turks from 1040, India was granted some respite for several decades, but a foothold beyond the Khyber Pass had been established, that would give easy access to the rich north Indian plain. For the next centuries, countless Muslim adventurers pushed ever further eastwards to find their fortunes. India, a tapestry of many Hindu kingdoms constantly competing for power, was ill-equiped to resist. The second wave of Islamic onslaught was a different sort, for they came to stay, not just to raid. Following Mahmud’s death in 1033, Ghazni was seized by the Seljuqs and then another Afghan dynasty, the Ghurid Sultanate (879–1215). The Ghurids conquered Delhi in 1193, and almost the whole of the Ganges Valley; their empire was not monolithic and Hindu kingdoms survived within it on a tributary basis. But soon the empire began to disintegrate, and one Turkish generals, Qutb-ud-din (d. 1210), seized control of Delhi, and established his own dynasty; the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526). Five dynasties ruled over the Delhi Sultanate sequentially: Mamluk (1211-90), Khalji (1290-1320), Tughluq (1320-1413), Sayyid (1414-51), and Lodi (1451-1526). The Mamluk dynasty established firm control of large areas of northern India, and the Khalji dynasty was able to conquer most of central India. The Delhi Sultanate reached its greatest extent under the Tughluq Sultanate, when a very large part of the subcontinent accepted the Delhi as their nominal overlord. But their overreaching ambition sowed the seeds of the decline of the Delhi Sultanate. On one famous occasion, the Tughluqs decided to move the capital from Delhi to a more central location. The entire population of Delhi was force-marched for 40 days south to Daulatabad, which soon proved too arid to support the new capital, so the population was moved north again, all resulting in great loss of life; today only the superb hilltop fortress of Daulatabad remains of this crazy endeavour. On another occasion, a prince of Hampi was captured, converted to Islam, and sent back south to serve as governors for the sultanate. He was soon usurped by his Hindu brother, who went on to found the southern India’s greatest empires, the Vijayanagara Empire (1336–1646), which eventually controlled much the same area as the Cholas Empire of the 10th and 11th century; today the magnificent ruins and temples of Hampi remain on of the great glories of southern India. The decline of the Delhi Sultanate by the violent arrival of Timur (d. 1405), a great Mongol conqueror in the style of Genghis Khan. The Mongol Empire conquered most of Asia and Eastern Europe, but had been successfully repelled by the Delhi Sultanate throughout the 14th century, perhaps as a result of having similar nomadic Central Asian roots and style of nomadic cavalry warfare. But Timur was a conqueror of a different kind. He marched with his army into India, plundering and killing all the way, easily defeated the Sultan's army, and sacked Delhi mercilessly for three days; some accounts say 100,000 inhabitants were slaughtered. The city was left in ruins, and the Delhi Sultanate little more than one power among many. In the northeast, an independent Muslim Sultanate emerged in Bengal, as well as the Hindu Ahom Kingdom. In the northwest, the Hindu warrior Rajputs of Rajasthan had long maintained their independence in Muslim dominated northern India. In the east, the Hindu Reddy Dynasty defeated the Delhi Sultanate, and maintained their independence for a century before being absorbed by the Vijayanagara Empire. In the east, the Hindu Gajapati Kingdom was another strong regional power to reckon with. In the southwest, another independent Muslim Sultanate emerged in Deccan, the Bahmani Sultanate, becoming the chief rival of the Vijayanagara until the early-16th-century. The impact of Islam on Indian culture has been inestimable, permanently influencing, permanently influencing the development of all areas of human endeavour. In India, Islam met the greatest challenge yet for her remarkable powers of assimilation. Both ancient Egypt and ancient Persia had been subsumed, but in the end the Indian civilisation survived largely intact. The successful Muslim conquerors retained their Islamic identity, and the non-Muslim population was left to their own laws and customs, though both would be subtly changed. The languages of the Muslim invaders were modified by contact with local languages, evolving into Urdu. Muslim rule saw a greater urbanisation of India and the rise of urban culture. Islam's impact was the most notable in the expansion of trade and mercantilism, as well as contact with the rest of the world facilitating the spread of numerous Indian scientific and mathematical advances such as Arabic numbers. A new architectural style known as the Indo Islamic emerged, a blend of Persian, Turkish and Indian influences; arches and domes had been rare earlier in India. There was also religious stimulation, notably the gradual emergence of monotheistic Sikhism in the Punjab, based on the spiritual teachings of Guru Nanak, the first of ten successive Sikh gurus. Of course, religious persecution was commonplace, including forceful conversions, destruction of temples, and well-documented massacres; it should be noted that religious violence between Hindus and Buddhists had not been uncommon beforehand. Even the many Hindus who converted to Islam were not completely immune to persecution, with the Muslims adapting their own version of a caste system. In May 1498, the first successful voyage by Vasco da Gama arrived in India at Calicut, after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope during the European Age of Discovery. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, and granted permission to trade in the city. The early modern period of Indian history corresponds to the rise and fall of the mighty Mughal Empire, which conquered most of the Indian subcontinent. The Mughal emperors presided over a golden age that resulted in some of the finest architecture in India. The Americas in the Late Middle Ages The first civilisations in the Americas that had emerged in Mexico and Peru, set a pattern that would last for 2000 years. A succession of highly developed cultures, all strongly influenced by the traditions of their predecessors, followed in the same two limited regions of the continents. Archaeology provides evidence of these various cultures, but the only ones known in any great detail are those surviving when the Spanish arrived to discover and decimate them; the Aztecs and the Incas. According to their own legend, the Aztecs (1345-1521) were a tribe from Aztlan somewhere in the northern Mexico; their own name for themselves was the Mexica, which subsequently provided the names for the country and capital city. By 1345, they were settled at Tenochtitlan in Lake Tetzcoco, within the area now covered by Mexico City. The site was supposedly chosen because there, the Aztecs witnessed an eagle standing on a cactus and devouring a snake, a sign from their god to that these migrants should build their new home; today the eagle-snake-cactus emblem sits in the middle of the Mexican flag. Within a century, the Aztecs had become the centre of an empire stretching across Central America; an empire based on the Aztecs' ferocious cult of war. Their patron deity was Huitzilopochtli, god of war and the sun. In order to keep the sun rising every day, Huitzilopochtli needed strength to drive from the sky the creatures of darkness; his diet was human blood. Also according to their creation myth, our world is the fifth in a cycle of apocalyptic destruction and creation, and the very survival of the universe depended upon the offerings of blood. Festivals and human sacrifices were almost continuous in the Aztec ceremonial year, with many other gods having their share of the victims. The Aztecs extend their empire to gather in more captives for the sacrifice, feeding a never-ending need for war, with reports of the blood-drenched ceremonies striking terror into their enemies. It has been estimated that there were some 50,000 victims every year shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards. The Aztec Empire's initial expansion culminated in a war in 1427 against the city-state of Azcapotzalco, which had previously dominated the Basin of Mexico. The Aztecs formed a three-way alliance with Texcoco, and Tlacopan to defeat them, and then came to dominate their allies. At its height, the the Aztecs Empire ruled over some 500 small states, six million people, and covered an area of 135,000 square kilometres. Aztec civilisation was complex. Tlatelolco boast at least 200,000 inhabitants divided into several social strata. The Aztec king held absolute power, but delegated important tasks to a group of unruly nobles and powerful priests. Below that were the commoners, serfs, and slaves. There was also an elite professional army such as the Eagle and Jaguar warriors, who had a dual role as militarised merchants. For Tenochtitlán was not only the political and religious capital, but a huge trading centre, with goods flowing in and out such as gold, jade, turquoise, cotton, cacao beans, tobacco, rubber, exotic feathers, tools, weapons, and foodstuffs. Dominating the city was the monumental stepped pyramid with its temples and ball court, where most of the sacrifices were carried out. There was an impressive water management system with canals criss-crossing the city and dykes to prevent flooding. They also had a relatively sophisticated system of agriculture, organised around intensive maize production, despite the lack of draft animals, metal tools and the wheel. The Aztec calendar played a central role in Aztec society, based both on a solar cycle of 365 days and a ritual cycle of 260 days. Every 52 years, the two calendars reached their shared starting point and a new calendar cycle began. One god of the Aztec pantheon would play an extraordinary role in the history of the Americas; Quetzalcoatl. He is the god of wind and learning, and described as fair-skinned, bearded, and wearing a wind breastplate made of a conch shell. In 1519, a fair-skinned stranger landed on the east coast, who the Aztecs welcomed as Quetzalcoatl. He was the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés. The Incas (1418–1533) dated back to the 12th century, but for a long time the town of Cuzco was a small place, the home of one of many competing tribes. A spectacularly quick process of military expansion began under Pachacuti (d. 1471), the son of the eight king of Cuzco. In 1438, Cuzco attracted the attention of the powerful and warlike Chanka people. While his father fled, Pachacuti led the military defense of the city and prevailed. He then usurped the throne. During Pachacuti's long reign and that of his son, spanning 55 years, the Incas built an empire which spread across southern Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile and Argentina; a distance of nearly 2500 miles. Perhaps 40,000 Incas governed a huge territory with some 12 million inhabitants, and over 100 distinct ethnic groups and languages; a form of Quechua became the primary dialect. Inca rule was high structured, as if drawn up by a political theorist with no interest in the higher ideals of liberty or equality; it has been described as socialist tyranny. Local administrators reported to some 80 district leaders, who reported to 4 regional governors, who in turn reported to the supreme Inca ruler in Cuzco. Meanwhile separate military garrisons dotted the empire to maintain peace. The most important political and military roles were kept in the hands of the Inca elite. The rest provided family members who were kept as well-kept prisoners at the capital. There was no written language but knotted cords known as Quipu were used for short communication and record keeping. A road system crisscrossed the kingdom, with relay runners capable of advancing messages at the rate of 150 miles per day. Most subjects were self-sufficient farmers, who paid taxes in kind; there was no Inca currency. Peasant communities also paid a special tax in the form of a young man or woman, selected to serve the state as a sort of rudimentary civil service. The main functions of young women were as priestesses in the state polytheistic religion, weavers of finely-woven textiles, or in the emperor’s harem. Young men laboured on fields reserved for the state, built roads, served in the military, took care of the imperial herds (all llamas belonged to the state), or worked in the gold and silver mines. Mortality rates in the mines, including the titanic silver mine at Potosí, were prodigious, perhaps one to two years. When a communities member died, they were obliged to send a replacement. Ethnic groups were also forcibly resettlement hundreds of miles from their home territory to squash the possibility of an uprising or pacify recently conquered land. Nevertheless, the people living under the Inca seem to have been tolerably content, with celebratory festivities and maize beer playing a major part in life. Notable features of the Inca Empire are its monumental architecture and agricultural innovations in a difficult environment. Master stone masons, they constructed large buildings, walls and fortifications using finely-worked blocks which fitted together so precisely no mortar was needed. The most famous example is Machu Picchu, constructed high on an inaccessible peak in the jungle. No less impressive is their system of terraced farming with canals and aqueducts for irrigation. Less than a century after the Inca rose to power, in 1527 two Spanish ship in the Pacific during the European Age of Discovery had a chance encounter with an ocean-going raft, setting off a chain of events that ended in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Meanwhile in all other parts of the Americas, the majority of tribal natives continued to live a semi-nomadic existence in the traditional manner of hunter-gatherers. Some groups were more sophisticated with a mixed economy of settled agriculture and fish especially closer to the advanced civilisations; the Mississippi Valley was also notably well-developed. Africa in the Late Middle Ages Africa has long been overlooked as a continent were civilisation developed until the arrival of the Europeans; except the obvious exception of Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. Yet Africa had a diverse variety of civilised development during the Middle Ages, albeit none as impressive as those in the Americas in terms of monument building and writing. Ethiopia has a strong claim for the first truly indigenous African state. According to legend the first dynasty was founded by the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba sometime around 4th century BC. The first verifiable kingdom of great power to rise in Ethiopia was that of Aksum (100-940) with Christianity introduced into the country by St. Athanasius of Alexandria about 330; Christianity would profoundly influence the rest of Ethiopian history. By the 8th century, Ethiopia was an isolated island surrounded to north, east, and gradually to the south by Islamic powers, and the medieval centuries were one long struggle against Muslim incursions from several directions. Islam was carried by merchants down the east coast of Africa, where Swahili city-states, such as Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mombasa, and Mogadishu, flourished from the 8th century as part of the well-established India Ocean Trade. The famed Muslim traveller, Ibn Battuta (d. 1369), visited Kilwa in modern day Tanzania and reported an extremely prosperous Sultanate, busy with trade in ivory, animal hides, gold, and timber, as well as slaves, although not in huge numbers. A high level of culture extended far into the east African interior as demonstrated by the remains of mine-workings, roads, and canals from about the 12th century. In West Africa, a succession of powerful kingdoms in the Niger-Senegal River Valley, spanning a millennium, based on the proceeds of the lucrative trans-Saharan trade in salt, ivory, slaves, ostrich feathers, cola nut (containing caffeine and already popular long before the discovery of the New World) and especially gold. The first kingdom to establish full control of the region was Ghana from the 8th century. Stretching from the coast inland to Timbuktu, it dominated this crucial crossroads of trade routes for a very long period; caravans linked the Mediterranean markets to the north with the supply of African raw materials to the south and east, which were otherwise blocked by the Sahara Desert. The tribal Moors of northwest Africa were early converts to Islam, and by the 10th century, many of the merchants at the southern end of the trade routes were converts. By the 11th century, the rulers of Ghana followed the traders in converting to Islam. The religion only gradually spread to the rest of the population, often through the blending the traditional African culture with Islam. In the 13th century, the gold fields of the upper Niger becomes more important, and this economic power shift was followed by a political change. Ghana was conquered by the Kingdom of Mali (1250-1500), which eventually stretched even further from the coast beyond the Niger. King Mansa Musa of Mali made quite a stir in the Muslim world when he made the hajj to Mecca in 1324. His entourage numbered 60,000 people and his camels carry 12 tons of gold. He supposedly distributed largesse with such gusto in Cairo that he caused a brief period of runaway inflation in the great city. The rest of Africa remains dim and shadowy, but some remarkable traces remain of one other kingdom. Zimbabwe offered rich opportunities for settlement, with excellent grassland for grazing cattle, and elephants as the basis for a trade in ivory. A seam of gold running along the highest ridge, shows signs of having been worked before 1000 AD. Between the 12th and 15th century a kingdom known as Great Zimbabwe stretched over the whole region. The ruins of about 100 villages and towns survive, with a stone palace for the local chieftains separated from those of his people. The buildings of the capital are evidence of equally great labour; a palace complex enclosed in massive stone walls with a great conical tower, and a fortress or acropolis at the top of a nearby hill with impressive dry-stone granite masonry. The city had been abandoned by the time a Portuguese captain arrived in 1531. African civilisation went into sharp decline everywhere as the world transitioned into the Modern Age. With the European Age of Discovery, outsiders pried around in search of plunder and trade and long-standing inland trade-routes were disrupted. Category:Historical Periods